Anticlimactic Dutch Games for a Non-Rainy Night

Guess My Star

Pick a star in the sky. Ask the other person to guess which one it is.

You are allowed to use a laser pointer to pick. The other player merely says ‘no’ or ‘yes’.

Additional directions (such as ‘left’ or ‘right’) are not allowed. If the correct star is guessed, do not rejoice.

Planet Hunt

A variation on ‘Guess My Star’ suitable for children. Pick a star in the sky and ask whether it has planets.

The answer is probably ‘yes’. Nobody wins.

Guess the Beetle (‘Raad de Kever’)

A classic Dutch drinking game.

The players stand in a circle facing each other.

One of the players, the Kevergever (Dutch for ‘beetlegiver’), walks outside of the circle with the other players chanting ‘beetle, beetle, beetle’.

Unseen, he gives one of the players the beetle. When the Kevergever rejoins the circle, the players chant ‘one, two, three’ and one more thunderous ‘BEETLE!’ after which each player points to the person they think holds the beetle.

The person to whom most fingers point, has to down his or her drink, regardless of who has the beetle.

The other players also down their drinks.

Queen of the Lowlands

A tense game in which contestants must employ bluffing as strategy.

A maximum of five players must stand around a tree.

The oldest player picks up a random object.

This object is called ‘the nebula’.

The players start to walk around the tree at a leisurely pace. The first one who thinks of a butterfly, shouts out the name of a prime number divisible by 39.

Then some bark is removed from the tree by the youngest player.

The Game

Blown over from the UK in the early part of the nineteenth century, this is a much-feared pastime that will haunt you the rest of your life.

Be advised that you can never un-read the following. The Game has only one rule: if you think about the Game, you lose the Game.

See? There, you lost.

Now, wait three seconds… And you lost again.

You may observe that there is no way to win the Game; it is only possible (and inevitable, now you know of it) to repeatedly and indefinitely lose it.

The only satisfaction that can come out of this game is to make other people lose it by reminding them of the Game.

Sure, you’ll lose in the process, but at least you get the satisfaction of dragging others down in your misery.

Advanced players may invent permanent associations with the game.

For example, the person who introduced me to the Game was an advanced player. In his mind, he permanently associated David Gray with the Game. Each time a David Gray song played, he would be reminded of the Game, and would lose.

He would then, of course, share his annoyance with everybody in the room.

They would lose the Game by proxy.

This association can deepen, so that looking at grey objects may actually remind you of the Game.

Be careful of making associations with stuff you actually love, like The Simpsons or brownies.

Event Horizon Whispers

Those who have seen the movie Interstellar, yet have never picked up a book on the general theory of relativity, believe that matter can return after passing the event horizon of a black hole.

Everyone else and their dog knows this is impossible. People belonging to this last category will love playing EHW.

The rules are the same as for the game Chinese whispers — a message is whispered along a line of players, but with one additional rule. One player is elected specifically by the first whisperer to be the Black Hole.

The Black Hole is surrounded by an event horizon.

Whichever whisper enters his or her ear, stops there and then. The game will be concluded at this point.

It should be fairly easy to find out who is the Black Hole. It will not be easy to find out the message.

More Dutch Games:

Yahtzee XL

Yahtzee with 1oo dice, thrown from a bucket.

Unilateral Checkers

Checkers with only one color.

Hex domino

Domino with hexadecimal numbers.

Palindromary

Make a palindrome out of a Dutch proverb. Continue trying all night.

Risk

Risk. (OK, this one’s not Dutch.)

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Astronomer Lucas Ellerbroek studied Theoretical Physics and obtained a PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam. He is well known in the Netherlands for his television appearances, TedX talks and for co-founding Nerd Nite Amsterdam. Currently, he works as a strategy consultant for the Boston Consulting Group and as a freelance journalist for NRS Handelsblad and popular science youth magazine Kijk. He is author of the book Planeten Jagers (Planet Hunters).